I am grateful to be given the opportunity to speak in today’s debate. I want to focus particularly on planning and local government. There is much in the Bill to welcome, around enforcement, around the strengthening of local plans and particularly around getting rid of the pernicious duty to co-operate, which is what complete scuppered our local plan in Sevenoaks, for reasons that were completely inexplicable.
The local authority took a local plan to the planning inspector that would have tripled our housing targets, yet despite being surrounded by local authorities that
have similar green belt constrictions to our own, it was chucked out by the planning inspector. There was no ability for the Secretary of State to do anything about it at the time, so the changes in the Bill are really positive and will make a big difference to local authorities.
I echo the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and others about planning inspectors. These people are unelected and unaccountable and we need to do something about them. At the moment, the powers do not rest with local authorities as they should do; they rest with the planning inspectors. I think all of us here will have examples of planning inspectors going against the national planning policy framework, with no ability for recourse whatsoever. That has to change. In many ways, the new power of the Secretary of State to intervene will restore democratic accountability that is not there at the moment.
I want to make three points to Ministers about the Bill. First, I back up what my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) said: it is not right to force district councils into combined county authorities. The Secretary of State was spot on when he said that one size does not fit all in local government. I have an unbelievably good local district council and I want it to remain; I would be very grateful if the Minister summing up confirmed that no powers will be taken away from my district council without its consent.
Secondly, the Secretary of State talked in his opening remarks about not having dormitory towns, but I have the opposite problem from that faced by many of my colleagues in that we have a thriving local high street yet shops are too often being turned into houses because of huge local demand. Recently, Courtyard Antiques, a much-loved shop that has been trading for a number of years, has been taken over and turned into houses because of the demand. We must look at this; it is too easy for change of use to be put in place and it is depriving our towns of thriving local high streets.
I cannot finish without talking about housing numbers and calculations. That is not part of the Bill, but obviously changes to the NPPF will be needed as a result of it. Many Members have said that we need greater protections for our green belt. It is absurd that in Sevenoaks, which is 93% green belt, the current proposal is to build 12,000 houses on 10 square miles. That is insanity. We must have changes that give some control back to local authorities on establishing need and that take into account green belt where it exists. That will make a significant change to our local communities. We need to set one simple test for ourselves: if it is green belt, it will be protected, and if a planning application is put on the green belt the answer will be “No.”
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